


From the Case Files of Detective Kujikawa

by glowingGalaxies



Series: Regrow - A Persona 4 Arcana Swap AU [9]
Category: Persona 4, Persona Series
Genre: Alternate Universe - Arcana Swap (Persona Series), Fortune!Rise - Freeform, Gen, New Game Plus, but as usual not tagging bc they're barely present, but with a twist!, in fact it is not sexual at ALL, rise's dungeon is WAY less uncomfortably sexual in this swap don't worry, so at least she gets that much this time around?, the rest of the IT + saki are also mentioned
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-08
Updated: 2021-01-08
Packaged: 2021-03-12 02:01:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,795
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28627686
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/glowingGalaxies/pseuds/glowingGalaxies
Summary: Mitsuo was more than happy to declare himself the killer, but even if the motivewasjust attention, there was no way he could've managed getting close enough to Yamano to murder her, and he couldn't explain how he'd done it without leaving any obvious cause of death.But now she was invested. She wasn't going to be played for a fool to indulge his weird fixation on attention, even if the police were satisfied with that answer still.And that's when she blacked out.---The so-called "Detective Princess" arrives in Inaba, though she really just wanted a break from cases. And then it gets personal.
Series: Regrow - A Persona 4 Arcana Swap AU [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1935223
Comments: 4
Kudos: 9





	From the Case Files of Detective Kujikawa

**Author's Note:**

> howdy! ik you guys (and me, honestly!) are probably on the edge of your seats from where pix's last fic left off, but in the meantime, thought I'd fill in at least one shadow we unintentionally skipped over earlier. rise's time to shine!

The weather was foggy as “Detective Princess” Rise Kujikawa stepped off the train and into the Yasoinaba station. Approximately noon (because hey, if they were making her take a case here, she wasn’t getting up _early_ for it, too), July 9th.

She reviewed what she’d been told about the murder of Mayumi Yamano, flipping her phone open and checking the notes. Yamano was found dead three months ago, hanging from a TV antenna on a foggy morning not unlike today. The police hadn’t been able to find any leads since, so the case’d gone cold, thankfully with no further deaths. 

There was also a note of an increase in reported missing persons in the same area, though they’d said they didn’t have any reason to believe it had a connection to the case as they were all found alive.

Rise wasn't sure what she thought, either way, but she was going to finish this case as soon as possible and move on, hopefully with time to work on the song lyrics she'd been scribbling down in her free time. Who knows.

This wasn't her first time around the block; within a few days she'd quickly uncovered there was a, frankly, rather suspicious student that frequented the local high school. Known for a tendency to stalk people and obsess, Mitsuo Kubo was certainly a believable candidate. And, if nothing else, he was clearly a creep who should be stopped, even if he wasn't actually the killer.

As the police took him in for a statement, Rise snooped further.

And that was when she found something that completely caught her off guard- Mitsuo _was_ planning something. He'd apparently been stalking a local teacher as of late, and she found scribbled plans for murder among his school notes. They were sloppy, but the intent was clear. She'd managed to make the police aware of Mitsuo, by complete chance, just in time to prevent a second murder.

Which was the _exact opposite_ of her intention- she'd been trying to fail this case so badly they'd stop sending her on them! 

Curse her inherited intuition. She couldn't even be unlucky when she wanted to. And now the police were celebrating a case finally closed, thanks to her, and she was even pushed to do an interview for the local news. Not that she minded the attention! But now she was just going to get _more_ work instead of the break she'd been hoping for.

It left a sour taste in her mouth. It was almost too easy. So she dug deeper, and… to her simultaneous joy and dismay, it didn't add up! Mitsuo was more than happy to declare himself the killer, but even if the motive _was_ just attention, there was no way he could've managed getting close enough to Yamano to murder her, and he couldn't explain how he'd done it without leaving any obvious cause of death. But now she was invested. She wasn't going to be played for a fool to indulge his weird fixation on attention, even if the police were satisfied with that answer still.

And that's when she blacked out.

When she woke up, something was very, very wrong. Wherever she now found herself, even through the heavy, headache-inducing fog, it was clearly not Inaba. Wandering aimlessly only looked more appealing than staying put when she saw shadowy, inhuman shapes moving in the distance, but her progress was slow between losing track of time and the low visibility of her surroundings.

As she moved, she pieced together what she could- she appeared to be in a movie studio, and from what she could make out the sets resembled previous cases of hers. The details and clues reduced to simple props, her outfits just costumes, her attempts at deductions all scripted.

It made her kinda sick to think about too much, so she didn't stick around them long. What was this, some kind of joke? Or…

With the last floor, she found herself momentarily tricked into thinking she'd made it back to a foggy Inaba, until she got closer and realized it was just another set. With a grimace and a building headache, she wandered through, recognizing the police station, the school, and finally… a door with a star on it, appearing to be a dressing room meant to stay behind the scenes. Against her better judgement, she opened it, and in a chair in front of a mirror saw… herself?

"Who… are you?" She tried, hoping for answers even with the strange circumstances.

As she half expected, however, her doppelganger just smiled, gave her a dismissive wave, and said, "Show's not quite ready yet! You'll have to wait a bit."

Resigning herself to be stuck here until a new opportunity arose, she cautiously took a seat against the wall on the other side of the room, never taking her eyes off the person with her but feeling too weak to risk anything.

She had no idea how long she sat like that- not getting hungry, but ultimately uneasy, bordering on feeling unwell- until the other occupant of the room stood up, and vanished from the room. Fighting off the lethargic feeling, she herself got up, and attempted to search the room for any sign of what was going on. 

Midway through rummaging around in a drawer full of messy scripts and musical scores named like cutesy idol songs, her clone reappeared, with no warning whatsoever. Rise would be lying if she said she didn't jump a little.

"You're so nosy! Even method actors need a break," it said, pushing her back from the drawer with no real force but still somehow seeming malevolent.

Rise pulled her hands back, and frowned at her clone, trying to read anything deeper in its expression than the surface smile. No dice.

"Nearly showtime; you should be getting ready too."

For some reason, the otherwise innocuous response turned her blood to ice. The doppelganger turned back to its mirror, ignoring her again.

Thoroughly unsettled, and no closer to answers, Rise settled back in her previous seat, and went back to waiting.

At some later point (time didn't mean anything anymore), the doppelganger rose again, this time approaching her. Its piercing golden eyes were inhuman and alarming, especially making direct eye contact now, but she couldn't stop it from pulling her along with it to the door.

"C'mon, cheer up, Princess," it berated, voice bubbly like Rise in interviews. "We're setting the stage now!"

She let herself be positioned on one of the Inaba sets- it looked like the police station office- and sank into the chair behind her as soon as her clone shifted its attention elsewhere. This fog, this whole situation, felt like it was sapping her ability to _think_.

Within an hour (She thought. Probably. Maybe?), she heard footsteps in the distance. Several- eight people, maybe?- even, and they were getting louder. She glanced at the clone to gauge its reaction- a stunning grin, in the fakest looking detective costume Rise had ever seen. It made her stomach lurch.

Did it… know?

A group of teenagers in school uniforms brandishing weapons materialized through the fog. She nearly did a double-take at the catlike creature accompanying them.

"There it is!" A girl’s voice called, notably the only one without a visible weapon.

"Are you alright?" The tallest of them, carrying what appeared to be a _chair_ of all things, asked. 

She cautiously stood up, eyes darting back to the doppelganger to see if it'd prevent her from leaving her "place". It watched her, but made no move, so she started toward the group of students. "I'm… alright, I think. I've been better. What-"

Her mind sifted through which question to ask first. _What is this place? What are you all doing? What's going on? … What is that cat thing?_

One of the other students filled in an answer before she could decide. "Rise-chan, we're here to rescue you!!" He- wait, is that Theodore Seta?

"Not so fast. You've got another act to put on, first."

She squinted at her clone, who was approaching on her side, slowly. "Another…?"

"Well, it's really the usual role, the Detective Princess. But what an exciting twist! Rather than another mystery, this time the deception's all her, and she's gotta come clean! How _did_ she get this far in the first place? And- action!"

A single spotlight flicked on above her, and as much as she was used to putting up a bit of a front for interviews, she wasn’t really sure what it was expecting her to do. Though… with those words, the sinking feeling came back, and she tried to avoid it. "Well, I got to Inaba riding a train," she tried. "Though I have no idea how I ended up _here_."

The doppelganger didn't seem amused by her vague attempt at a joke, but didn't lose its smile, either. "Ah, refusing to face the music as always. Maybe if you did, you wouldn't have to keep going on cases when you're so sick of it!"

"Wh-what?" Rise carefully controlled her expression, trying to look less embarrassed than she was. Sure, _she_ knew she'd been trying to get out of her family legacy, but no one _else_ had to! "Why wouldn't I like detective work? I'm helping people, and I'm practically famous!"

"Oh, isn't that the question? Why _don't_ you enjoy being a Detective Princess, when you've tried so hard to? Why does it still feel so fake? Better to ignore the problem than to investigate further into _that_ mystery!"

"I…" She couldn't come up with a good comeback fast enough.

"That's why all these cases are fake, because I'm a fake!" It declared, throwing its arms into the air as if showing off the set around them. "Picking the easy answers to get things over with? As if these cases are just fiction instead of affecting real people's lives? Might as well _all_ be made up!"

"That's! That's not true. I _am_ a detective, and my deductions have helped people!"

"You don't even know if you're helping the _right_ people when you only look at the obvious, 'detective'. How many culprits have you let get away with it?”

“What do you know?” Rise shot back, scrambling to defend herself. “I’m doing the best I can!”

The clone contemplated this response for a moment, hand on her chin like a stereotypical detective. “I suppose it’s true you are, in a sense, doing your best. After all, if you just can’t seem to motivate yourself, any effort is something! But creating an entire detective idol identity to cover up the feeling you have no idea what you’re doing, instead of _talking_ to someone? I have to say, I’m not sure I can say the same for that. It’s like a classic whodunit, but we don’t even know what the real identity you’re killing is!”

The intimate knowledge of how she’d been feeling thrown back in her face, coupled with the stupid mocking detective references, made her angry, and she responded a bit more irrationally than she’d normally like to. “Why do you talk like you know how I think?! You’re just a fake pretending to know what you’re talking about!”

“Oh, of course I am!” The doppelganger chirped back, turning obnoxiously sweet and peppy again. “After all, that’s what you are, and I _am_ you!”

“No… stop it! Stop!!” She registered the group behind her tense, but she was too angry at this point to care. “You’re not me!”

The doppelganger cackled, and a sort of black fog swarmed into it as it melted and erupted into a vaguely humanoid monster. Rise’s headache got unbearable, and she nearly lost consciousness again, collapsing to the ground. 

She picked up sounds of fighting, but it took a moment for her to open her eyes and process that the students were now attacking the monster, by the looks of it even trying to force it back and away from her. While she certainly didn't have any experience analyzing otherworldly battles, it seemed they weren't having the easiest time, the monster frequently doing something to predict their attacks and dodge. She heard Theodore Seta's voice advising them on when and how to strike, along with the quieter girl with black hair taking that information and turning it into orders, but it was a slow-going fight.

But it was obvious they didn't want the monster to reach her, so she hesitated to run back to them, especially when she still felt drained and had no way to fight.

So she sat there, following the fight as best as she could and reflecting on the information she had. The doppelganger had, in retrospect, clearly been trying to goad her into a response- bringing up things she didn't want to confront, in front of an _audience_ , and mocking her. Based on how it only turned into a monster _after_ she got angry, she could only assume her words had been what triggered it, likely specifically her denial.

She also had no idea how these students seemed to know this was going to happen and come prepared for it- though maybe not well enough, as she watched the girl with curly brown hair take a nasty hit- but they clearly knew what they were doing overall. They'd come to save her, and were protecting her from the monster, so… maybe, she could trust them? There wasn't really an alternative.

Eventually, they started hitting the monster back, having seemingly identified openings in its attacks. Whatever it was doing to dodge and deflect was still catching them a few times, but it was far from the one-sided fight it’d appeared at the start, and with a final burst of fire the monster collapsed. Shakily, Rise stood up, and cautiously joined the others. Looking past them, she could see it’d dissolved back into the form that looked almost identical to herself.

“Kujikawa-chan, that thing’s called your Shadow. It’s made of your repressed feelings,” the boy with headphones filled in, though a bit late. “Trust me, I know how embarrassing it is.”

“We’ve all gone through this,” the shortest of them, with a blue hat, added.

“So my denial is what made it get violent, huh?”

The chair guy nodded. “You have to accept it, or it’s just gonna come back worse.”

“Figures…” 

She took a deep breath, and moved through the group to directly face her... Shadow. It shifted to stare right back at her, expression finally neutral instead of all the smiles she’d seen before.

“I… should’ve stopped pushing aside that I felt like a ‘fake’ detective. Even if I didn’t enjoy it as much as I thought I should, trying to get out of cases instead of taking them seriously was only making things worse. Ignoring how I felt about myself and my role just kept me from doing something to fix it.”

She stood firm, and refused to let embarrassment get to her now.

“Even if I’m not a ‘real’ detective, I can accept that part of me and do better. Running away from it and making it other people’s problem was a mistake. And I realize all this because… you’re me, even if I couldn’t see it.”

The Shadow nodded, and then glowed and changed form. For a second, it seemed it was going to turn back into the monster, but Rise’s heart was lighter now, and she found she knew almost instinctively what was going on with it. As it floated in front of her, a tarot card descended into her hand- Fortune- and she knew what it was as she accepted it. Persona.

The students around her cheered- Theodore was even hugging her, which was strange because while she didn’t exactly keep up with his work she hadn’t gotten the impression he was this open and emotional- but she found herself growing dizzy and faint again. She struggled to keep herself from collapsing onto anyone, but ultimately the chair guy supported her with an arm, which she was grateful for even if she couldn’t find the strength to say it.

“Let’s get out of here,” the girl with black hair said, and took out some sort of object that appeared to teleport them outside of the strange film lot.

From there, she was all but carried through a foggy world as the people around her commented on the fight and TVs. They stepped _through_ a stack of TVs, which Rise might’ve questioned more if she weren’t barely awake, and while most of the kids split up there she was helped back to her house.

She passed out as soon as she was in her bed, but she slept better than she had in a long time.

**Author's Note:**

> and then she woke up and discovered she'd accidentally slept for like a week


End file.
